Autism Vox

Today Is The Day: Invasion of the Teletubbies

by Kristina Chew, PhD on March 25th, 2007

The Flab Four touch down in New York City, at JFK Airport, on March 26th to begin their “incredible simulation” of the Beatles’ 1964 “British Invasion” and to kick off a $500,000-plus campaign to “help broaden the appeal of the Teletubbies beyond the mainstay audiences of toddlers and parents.” As an article in the March 25th New York Times notes, a “pop-up shop” (= temporary retail store) is to open on Bleeker Street on March 28th and Tinky Winky, Dipsy, LaaLaa, and Po will be touring New York City landmarks including Times Square (will they ride the in-store ferris wheel at Toys ‘R’ Us as Charlie used to?), the Apollo Theater, and the Statue of Liberty (I can already see LaaLaa wearing one of these).

And, they will be “fund-raising for charities that help the autistic.” Namely, Autism Speaks and Cure Autism Now (CAN).

Indeed, fund-raising for these autism organizations—-by selling Tubby-theme merchandise—is prominently featured on a microsite, Take the Teletubbies Test. Regarding that pop-up shop from the page entitled Love It:

What’s better than scoring totally exclusive, limited-edition tees and accessories? Looking good for a cause — a percentage of proceeds from all items sold at the store will benefit Cure Autism Now and Autism Speaks.

Of particular exclusivity are Issac Mizrahi Bags for Autism; Mizrahi is a “big Teletubbies fan”; Autism Speaks (I have to say, its blue puzzle piece logo reminds me just a bit of Tinky Winky) and Cure Autism Now are, it is noted, “the leading organizations dedicated to accelerating Autism research and awareness.”

The campaign is directed at preteens, teenagers, and young adults, some of whom were the original audience for the Teletubbies, and, indeed, my son Charlie is in this cohort. As I noted three weeks ago:

My son Charlie used to be a huge fan of the Teletubbies. Watching many of their videos—-Here Comes the Teletubbies, Dance with the Teletubbies, Favorite Things—-evoked great delight and laughs from him on days when nothing else seemed to; he used to love to re-enact the beachside adventures of Jesso the dog, or tell us the story of the Gingerbread Boy, again and again and again. The names of the Teletubbies and their ball, hat, bag and scooter were easy for Charlie to say, and technicolored Teletubbyland was a vista easy for Charlie to follow. Jim and I watched so many episodes (or, rather, we watched the same videos so many times over) that we started to acquire a true fondness for the short segment about the magic tree in the seasons, while Jim theorized about the echoes of the Fab Four in the Teletubbies (the mind does tend to wander when one watches Dipsy and LaaLaa fall off their Tubby chairs Tubby-however many hundred times).

…… When he was between six and seven years old, all of those videos went into the garbage. I do not know exactly why, but I would turn on a Barney or Teletubbies video that Charlie had long had and, after a minute or so of watching, Charlie would hit his head on the floor, and cry. I did not understand: How could something he seemed so much to like cause this to happen? In the years that followed, no videos or DVDs seemed to catch Charlie’s interest. ……

After hearing about the “Teletubbies Invasion,” I showed Charlie their PBS Kids webpage. “All done,” said Charlie, with a consternated look: The boy has been humming Beatles tunes (”In My Life”), smiling when I popped in the Jimi Hendrix CD, and learning to play the piano with both hands while reading the treble and bass clefs. My friend Mom-NOS has written about how her son Bud’s interest in the Teletubbies and his imaginative play about “the guys” have evolved as he has grown, and of how they have become a sort of metaphoric touchstone for him. He reads their books out loud to his mom and fills “pages with gorgeous abstract art in purple, green, yellow, and red.”

Indeed: It is the music and the short scenes (played twice) of children doing familiar activities (playing the rain and in a “puddling pool” in the yard, searching for a ball lost at the beach, putting on shoes) that always and especially interested Charlie. One of his favorite segments was of a boy watching his father assemble one of those trailers that can be hitched behind a bike; Charlie always watched the last scene with especial focus as father and son rode off through a park. I have to wonder if that scene of dad and son bike-bonding is in Charlie’s mind as he rides off (as he did today, the first ride of the Spring) with Jim beside him. I can tell from the way Charlie leans over the handlebars and then stands up in the pedals, and then turns his head just a bit towards Jim, that he is smiling.

Somehow, I do not think that the “wide appeal” that the three agencies who are, on behalf of Ragdoll, hosting this week’s Teletubbies Invasion, have in mind is the same as what Mom-NOS and I are thinking of. Whether or not the Teletubbies are “pop culture icons,” or become fashion icons (via t-shirts that say things like “Tele What Tele Who?”), or become autism fund-raising icons, they do have a kind of iconic status for Charlie (who has said good-bye to them) and for Bud (who is finding them a good old friend to “touch base” with as he grows up). Charlie will be ten years old in May; he was born in 1997, the same year as the Teletubbies were introduced in a BBC television series. (I still remember Jim showing me a Newsweek article about them and saying words to the effect of, “I guess we’re going to be watching this sort of thing”—famous last words!).

Regarding those Mizrahi bags, the Take the Teletubbies Test website proclaims “Look great for a cause! It doesn’t get better than this.” This being, a Tubbies-inspired handbag for autism fund-raising, and I beg to differ: When your cause is a great kid like Bud, like Charlie, it just does not get better. And that is something you won’t be buying soon at any retail establishment, pop-up or not, in New York City, not even on Teletubbies Day (March 28th, as proclaimed by Mayor Bloomberg).

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POSTED IN: Art, Fundraising, Media, Music, Parenting, Toys